JUST LIKE THESE UNPUBLISHED AVEDON PHOTOGRAPHS, A NEW EXHIBITION DEVOTED TO BALENCIAGA REVEALS THE QUIET REVOLUTION OF ONE OF FASHION'S CHICEST BRANDS
At the risk of beating a dead superlative, the utter chic of Nicolas Ghesquière-era Balenciaga is so complete, so now, so cultish, that even Balenciaga-heads can’t easily describe the French label’s preexisting allure. In their defense, it’s been almost ten years since Ghesquière assumed the helm, heralded fin-de-siècle skinny-pant lust and bag envy, and thrust the exotic name of Cristóbal Balenciaga back into the collective consciousness. In that decade, Ghesquière has essentially built a creative lab out of the august house, keeping critics guessing season after season. Before that, it had been nearly thirty years since the legend himself retired, closing the doors of the atelier and quipping, rumor has it, “There is no one left to dress.” Of course, it doesn’t help that the “monk” of couture, as Balenciaga was called, was probably the quietest figure in 20th-century fashion.
Aiming to reverse the amnesia is the Musée de la Mode et du Textile, whose massive “Balenciaga Paris” exhibition at the Louvre is the first major retrospective of the couturier in thirty years. For seven months, a mind-blowing 170 pieces, old and new, will be on view. The wide-ranging oeuvre—culled from the house’s archives, as well as from private collections and even the museum’s own—is further enhanced by the futuristic displays by artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and the lighting design of Benoît Lalloz—both longtime collaborators with Ghesquière on Balenciaga boutiques.
From the very start, Balenciaga stood out from the pack. Born in a remote fishing village in 1895 in the Basque region of Spain, not on the sartorially-sanctioned soil of France, he taught himself fashion’s highest form by studying the creations of Elsa Schiaparelli and Madeleine Vionnet on trips to Paris as a young man. Before long, he was draping, cutting, and fitting his own patterns—a hands-on technique not shared by other couturiers—and opening boutiques in Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián. Finding favor among the Spanish royal family and other members of the aristocracy, he could have lived out the rest of his years as a very rich, very famous, very handsome clothier to the court—had it not been for a little thing called the Spanish Civil War.
In 1937, the starting point of the exhibition, Balenciaga fled the unrest and landed in Paris. He naturally brought with him vestiges of his homeland; for instance, his “infanta” dresses, an early signature, were inspired by the lacy costumes of the Spanish princesses in paintings by Velázquez. The rakish émigré was an instant hit. Wealthy women the world over soon made breathless trips to his atelier seeking his lustrous black dresses, even risking travel to Europe during the war years. One longtime patron, Countess Mona von Bismarck, ordered 150 dresses in one sitting.
Soon, however, Balenciaga’s penchant for decoration melted away, his silhouettes loosened and what there was of an overdramatized rivalry with Christian Dior ended without injury. And thus began Balenciaga’s real legacy: extreme unfussiness. It is in his relentless reduction of cuts and seams that Balenciaga achieved genius status, apparent in these previously unpublished photos of model Dovima taken for Harper’s Bazaar by Richard Avedon. As the show’s curator, Pamela Golbin, says, “If Charles Frederick Worth launched haute couture in 1868, it was Cristóbal Balenciaga who found its purest form one hundred years later. Particularly moving is a wedding dress in the show dating from 1967, in which he arrives at such a wonderful state of simplicity that it has only one seam. It’s so simple that it’s complicated—a paradox. It’s like he went from impressionism to abstract expressionism.” This, at the age of 72.
Throughout his fifty-year career, Balenciaga lived and worked in self-imposed seclusion from the media. He never gave interviews and posed only for a handful of photographers. By the start of the 1960s, his quiet intensity saw radical results: cocoon shapes, mini-culottes, and baby-doll chemise dresses paved the way for the youth-centric fashion that soon followed, and clearly influenced the collections of former apprentices André Courrèges and Emanuel Ungaro. Could it be that Balenciaga was a revolutionary at heart? As they say, watch out for the quiet ones—and that would include Ghesquière. Lee Carter
Above, left:
Dovima, model, coat by Balenciaga, Paris, August 1950
© 1950 The Richard Avedon Foundation
Above, right:
Dovima, model, dress by Balenciaga, Paris, August 1955
© 1955 The Richard Avedon Foundation
Photography Richard Avedon
Courtesy The Richard Avedon Foundation
“Balenciaga Paris” runs through January 28, 2007, at the Louvre.
For information: www.ucad.fr
